Three years ago, Uganda and Tanzania signed an agreement to develop the US$ 3.58 billion (about Shs 10 trillion) Tanga-Arusha-Musoma railway, which is supposed to be completed next year. While the project successfully took off in Tanzania, the business community fears that across the border in Uganda it could take much longer.

Already, design studies to upgrade the Tanga- Arusha line to standard gauge and the construction of a new link to Musoma – both on the Tanzania side – are ongoing. Indeed, this route – dubbed the Central Corridor – is important as it has been in the pipeline since 1967 when it was included in the East African Community treaty but it stalled following the collapse of the regional integration.

The port to railway line, it is hoped, will open up the Southern route and boost regional trade and investment plus regional co-operation. The Tanzanians do not want to see another failure, which is why they are working round the clock to see that the project rolls according to schedule. Of course the railway line will take the lion’s share with about $1.9 billion earmarked, other linked projects such as Mwambani (Tanga) Port is to get $695.5 million; Musoma port $72.6 million, and the new Kampala port $320 million (Shs about 836 billion) .

Tanzania Ports Authority (TPA) has announced that it will kick start its ports expansion drive this financial year. These include Mtwara, Dar-es-salaam and all the ports in the Joint Venture port to railway project. Specifically, the Tanga and Musoma ports will handle cargo traffic destined for Uganda and South Sudan.

However, Uganda is still dilly dallying. The Ministry of Works and Transport (MoWT) is citing land acquisition bottlenecks as the major impediment in developing the new Kampala port at Bukasa. About 500 hectares are required for the new port. However, Bukasa village residents numbering about 118 people with a total of 125.05 hectares must be compensated. Other affected persons include witchdoctor Mama Fina who has about 17 shrines at the peninsular, while ten hectares are owned by the Uganda Police Force, 83.8 hectares by the National Forestry Authority (NFA) and 11 hectares comprise a swampy area under the Ministry of Water and Environment and the National Environment Management Authority.

The proposed Bukasa port will be 3 km away from the Namanve Industrial park by road and 7km by rail. It is also approximately 20 km away from Kampala Central Business District, which makes it more ideal than Port Bell port at Luzira.

Cypriano Okello, an official in the MoWT planning and policy department, who has previously deputized the Bukasa Project coordinator, told The Independent that the government opted for Bukasa other than expanding Port Bell because the latter has limited space for storage of cargo, and the narrower Port Bell -Kampala road. If one ship that docks at the port contains 40 containers, it requires a minimum of 20 trucks to evacuate its cargo. This in turn has been the source of the traffic jam and congestion along the road in the past. Okello says that the inter-land connection between the port and the rest of Kampala has also made the government rethink the usage of the goods shed around the Shoprite Entebbe Road junction.

Also, the land around Port Bell is heavily built, which will require huge sums of money to compensate residents, traders and industrials such as Uganda Breweries Ltd, manufacturing and constructions industries, Luzira Prisons and Butabika Hospital.

While Port Bell occupies 1.6 hectares with a capacity of handling one million tonnes of cargo per year, Bukasa will occupy 500 hectares and handle six times more cargo.

But Kassim Omar, the national chairman of the Uganda Clearing and Forwarding Association (UCIFA), doesn’t see the need for a new port. He says the government is simply duplicating services of the old port that is in dire need of improvement and rehabilitation. He likens Uganda to “a man who decides to build a new house after falling to maintain his old one.”

Even Everest Kayondo, the chairman of Kampala City Traders Association (KACITA), is skeptical about the port’s future prospects.

“Privatisation of the railway is a challenge because the Rift Valley Railway (RVR) looks at routes that are more commercial and lucrative. So even if it is constructed, RVR will be hesitant to put its wagons on this railway because it has said in the past that Mombasa is bigger business.” Mombasa is 1,200 km away from Kampala and about 90% of Uganda’s exports and imports transit through it with a paltry 1% being transported through Dar es Salaam, which is about 1,800 km away. Tanga is about 2,000 km plus away from Kampala. But while Mombasa might present a bigger business opportunity for RVR, Uganda can take advantage of Tanga and other Tanzanian ports since it contributes about 78% of transit traffic at Mombasa.

Apart from misgivings about the project, Kayondo says the port and railway would be almost a godsend for business people because it will eliminate the monopoly of Mombasa. He says the business community will enjoy water and railway transport that are much cheaper than air and road. For instance, he says while it costs about $2,000 (Shs 5.2 million) to transport a 20-foot container from China to either Mombasa or Dar ports, it costs about $3,000 (Shs7.8 million) to transport the same container from the ports to Kampala, which makes the cost of doing business too high. In contrast, it will cost between US $ 750 -1,000 (about Shs 1.9 to 2.6 million) to transport a container by rail and water to Bukasa – almost four times less.

Buliisa County Member of Parliament Stephen Birahwa Mukitale who also sits on the Physical Planning Committee under whose docket MOWT falls, is worried that this important project is being affected by private interests in government projects, a vice that has become a menace nowadays. He cites the standard gauge railway project that will connect Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda and the Katosi Project as examples of such negative private interests.

While it is too late to stop the joint venture project, Omar argues that the expansion of Port Bell would have been made more feasible considering that the Tanzanians are just expanding their old ports to make them more efficient instead of completely building new ones as their Ugandan counterparts are doing.

A visit to one of the ports the Tanzanians are expanding in the South Eastern region of Mtwara would be an eye opener to the Ugandan officials. Mtwara Port built in the 1950s on the Indian Ocean coast; will get $214 million for its expansion. It is Tanzania’s third largest sea port after Dar-es-salaam and Tanga, and may overtake these ports given the increasing oil and gas investment, cement factory construction and related activities in the region.

Source:: All Africa

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